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Commentary: Some thoughts on the election

After all the time and money spent on the recent campaign, we wind up with pretty much the same thing we had ahead of the election. It seems like that energy and money could have been better spent. Now we have to hope that pretty much the same cast of characters doesn’t have the same result. Who will blink? Hopefully for the country both sides will or we’ll all go over the cliff together with both sides pointing fingers at each other all the way to the bottom.

Already, we are hearing the President and House Speaker claim the same goal but with different approaches. We’ve heard that before and it didn’t work. Neither side can claim any moral high ground in this debate nor any real mandate.

Instead, both sides have failed to lead and left us with huge problems that must be addressed. The election basically gave them another chance to do what they should have done in the first place. Now we wait to see who will lead with action instead of with words.

It looks like the Republican party needs to rethink their approach if they want to win back the White House in the future. They obviously need a candidate who can appeal to a wider portion of the population. Maintaining the conservative base isn’t enough to win anymore. Actually, both parties will be challenged to do that in 2016.

Rural America, we have a problem. Once again the map shows a lot of red with some blue spots. Of course, those blue spots are where most of the people are and that’s what wins elections. It gets harder each election to feel like a vote in rural America has much impact on the final outcome.

I think our public servants could have done a greater public service by using the money spent on the recent campaign for education, nutrition, debt relief or a number of other areas of need. That would be real change.